The objective is to establish a Center for Health Services Policy Analysis to facilitate the flow of information to federal officials making critical decisions affecting the quality and availabiity of health services as well as the allocation of resources in relation to health needs. To meet the needs of decision makers it will be necessary to utilize health services research methods (including microeconomic studies), ethical analysis, and health policy research and analysis. In addition, the HPP will carry out ongoing analyses of the health status of the population, major health problems, the determinants of health, and the relationship of these data to health services policies. Two methods will be used to set priorities for policy analysis and research: the first involves interviews with key federal health officials in Congress, DHEW, and the Executive Office of the President to identify issues of immediate importance and those that will be of greatest concern during the next five years. The second process will be a refinement of the present HPP analytic framework for determining priority issues at the federal level. This process begins with the assumptions that: 1) control of costs of health services, national health insurance, and the allocation of resources among environmental, social service, and health programs will dominate federal health policy decision making for the next five years; and that 2) ethical issues (e.g., rationing of health services) will be of critical national importance. A program to provide technical assistance to federal health policy makers will be carried out directly through an office in Washington, D.C. as well as from the Center's base at the University of California, San Francisco. Wide dissemination of the findings to other policy makers, professionals and the public will take place through testimony, published studies, workshops, conferences, and direct working relationships with the mass media.